[horde] [imp] default reply behavior in dimp/imp

[Michael M Slusarz]

Quoting Ralf Lang <lang at b1-systems.de>:

> Am Montag, 5. September 2011, 22:53:18 schrieb D G Teed:
>
>> I don't follow what you agree with in those comments.
>>
>> Horde is used by many people who are occasional users of dimp. They do not
>> know that unlike Outlook, Thunderbird, hotmail and gmail, in dimp, there
>> is only one button shown for reply.

And this is a fantastic feature of IMP.  One button = less confusion  
for the users when they want to reply.  So IMP is better than mailers  
that have more than 1 button.

> Hallo Mr Teed,
>
> when answering you now I hit a button "antworten" (reply) in kontact, one of
> the desktop clients available in Kolab and the default of the KDE desktop.
>
> It's exactly labeled as in dimp and it behaves the same: I got a  
> mail from the
> list and I am answering to the list.
> Besides the button there is a dropdown offering me to sender, list or all
> recipients. The only difference in dimp is that the default does not show up
> in the more detailed options again. I also used outlook at various customers
> and looked out for alternatives under windows. I don't have the time to check
> out evolution (the gnome default) right now but I think it behaved similar.
> This means there are other mailers around which follow the same design
> decision.
>
>
>> This singular button removes the
>> user's
>> initial selection
>> over the scope of the reply, again, unlike any other mail agent interface.

Again, this is wonderful news.  We *automatically* pick the proper  
reply type.  Less work for the users.

Your argument seems to be that giving the users *more* obvious reply  
buttons in the UI is *less* confusing.  But this is exactly opposite  
of general UI principles.  Normally, you want to provide a basic  
interface with reasonable/sane defaults so that the normal users don't  
have to think: they click a button and it just works.  And then you  
give the power user a way to do what they need to do, that doesn't  
interfere with a normal user's UI experience.  I believe our reply  
button achieves this goal (could they graphical display of the button  
be improved?  Certainly.  But that is cosmetic; the underlying theory  
of a single reply button is sound).

Not to mention, your suggested approach defeats the whole purpose of  
the automatic reply button.  Namely, that the majority of messages  
sent to multiple recipients SHOULD BE REPLIED TO ALL.  A reply to  
these messages SHOULD NOT be sent only to the recipient, absent a  
conscious decision by the sender to do so.

> See above. Still, I don't think it reverts anything. It does exactly what it
> says.
>
>> One cannot design an interface that is unorthodox and claim correctness.
>
> Well, many did before. Apple does it all the time. Heck, even firefox has its
> settings menu in different places when running in different OSes and they
> think this is right.
>
>> It is like the famous quote of a proud mother watching a group
>> of soldiers: "Oh look! Our Johnny is the only one in step".
>
> This is leading down the wrong path. Let's stick to arguments rather than
> rhetorics.
>
>> Due to this unconventional design, we are currently enforcing traditional
>> mode on horde webmail (traditional has reply/reply all), which is a pity
>> because dimp is cool, and the mobile interface is also very nice.
>
> Yes, that's really a bad situation but how does this differ from dynamic? I
> just went to this thread in traditional view and hit the "Antworten" reply
> button. It defaulted to reply to list.

Another example of the single reply button doing The Right Thing.

michael

___________________________________
Michael Slusarz [slusarz at horde.org]